Navigation / Association & SEO Lesson
So how are you enjoying the world of search engine optimization and marketing so far? Loads of fun right? Just wait, it's only going to get even more exciting! Just remember this article is under a dozen pages so if you're already getting tired of reading this then you may want to think about hiring someone to consider these details for you. On that note, feel free to contact us with any questions along the way or utilize our SEO services.
Ok so now that we got that shameless self promotion out of the way, let's continue shall we? This lesson will cover the topic of content association and navigation elements of your website design. More importantly, it's going to show you how considering certain practices in how your content is organized and associated throughout your site can result in some dramatic increases in traffic to your website. We're still not quite to the technical stuff yet, so for those of you still very new to SEO don't get intimidated yet. We're just going to give you some ideas of how you can improve your placement still through basic efforts. The technical stuff starts on the next step but we might sneak in some warm-ups. :)
The thing is, that a lot of people who claim to know a thing or to about search engine marketing like to forget some of the basics, not knowing just how beneficial they still are. In this step are some techniques and better practices many seem to over look. If not in lack of supplying it, but how they're applying it. You would be surprised at the thing's a search engine will reward you for if you meet certain expectations in their ranking criteria. Since you've taken the time to read this far into the guide we're going to start getting into the more rewarding areas. Some of which you probably wont find in other beginner's SEO tutorials. You've earned the additional tips since you're obviously serious about search engine marketing efforts.
Enough bloating, back to business. Let's talk about your content, how it's layed out and how you're letting both us humans, and the search engine spiders navigate and browse it all. We're going to identify if you're providing some key elements that search engines will reward you for in their search result listings. There will be some good tips before the end of this particular lesson but first let's look at your menu and a couple key things to analyze.
Menu Placement: If you have any control of the placement of your main website's menu at all, then place it towards the top of the page. This accomplishes one of two things. Whether you're aware of it or not, it will place those links that create your menu closer to the top of that page in the code. What this does is let's the search engine spider's get a nice starter map for your website's content as early as possible. Allowing them to navigate and browse your site easier, which equals your content getting indexed faster and more efficiently. It also accomplishes compliancy in the standard web design that most internet users have become familiar with.
Menu Rendering: How do the search engine spiders see your links in your menu? To find out go ahead and browse to your website in your browser of choice and right click. Choose "View Source" in the drop-down menu and check out your "source code" to your website. If you're familiar with HTML you already know you're looking for anchor tags which we'll cover more in the next pages. If you're a total beginner than use the find function and look for the menu link names. If you can find them, and see the link or URL that they point to. Then chance's are you doing the bare minimum which is a start, but we'll show you how to optimize these soon as well.
Except when you think about the other sites you see around the internet that do well in rankings. They seem to provide other ways that allow you to navigate their site right? So let's also look at some of these other options to provide better navigation throughout the content of your web design. As well as satisfy some things you may be overlooking which could potentially boost your traffic rank.
Site Elements: What should a website contain to make you feel like it's a legitimate resource? In other words what are some elements you would look for if you found a random website from a random search to make you confident in what it offers? Hopefully some thing's you may have thought of would be a "Contact" page that includes a phone number, physical address, and other contact information. Or what about having such information either directly on, or available from every single page? Again, the search engines are in business based on the soul fact that they make finding what people want on the internet as easy and dependable as possible. Their algorithms take things like this into consideration as well, and are another thing to be rewarded for in their ranking system. There's a lot more to be said about elements within your website such as these and we're going to look at them a bit more in depth later in the article. Remember we can't over all our nifty SEO and effective SEM tricks right? So for now we will move, you still have 6 more lessons left so don't get to anxious... Internal Linking: Make sure as you're building your website up that your visitor traffic get's numerous way's to find other areas of your website, from within it's content. What this means is that in both your existing and future content, take the time to provide multiple paths to other content your site provides. For example, since this article is a beginner's guide to search engine optimization I might bring up another area of the site related to it with a link related to SEO in line with my content like you just read. If it's a keyword or phrase directly relavent to another page, use it as an excuse to embed another link. What you're doing can be likened to leaving breadcrumbs for the search engine spiders to follow, enabling them to browse and index your website more efficiently. While at the same time making things easier to navigate for your visitor traffic giving them a reason to stay and help increase your CTR efficiency.
The hope is right now you're thinking about a lot of area's you can already apply what was covered in this lesson throughout your site. So go satisfy some spiders and make some adjustments to your own website before you move to the next step when you're ready. For those of you who have been procrastinating on getting a little technical about your internet marketing initiatives, this is your line in the sand. There will be some thing's covering basic HTTP elements and the HTML it uses to make a webpage happen. So if that doesn't bother you than by all means proceed...
Better SEO Introduction | Keywords and Keyphrase | Title Relavency | Dynamic Content | Navigation / Association | Meta Tags Explained | SiteMaps and Robots | HTML Optimization | Inbound & Outbound Links | Link Building | Search Engine Submission
|